A Cry in the Wilderness Part 5

Nov. 13. A bad lot of a date! No work yet, and I 've tramped all day in the slush and snow. I dried my things down in Mrs. T.'s room. I did n't dare to spend any more in car fares, for I must have a stove.

I know to a cent just what I 've spent since I came, but I 'm going to put it down so I can see the figures; it will make me more cautious about spending. The car fare is more than I meant it should be, but, to save it, I walked the first three days from Eighty-sixth Street and Fourth Avenue--a bakery that advertised for a woman to sell the early morning bread in the shop; three hours of work only, at twenty cents an hour--down as far as the Washington Market where they wanted a girl to sell flowers in a sidewalk booth, for two weeks before Christmas. I found then that the soles of my boots were beginning to wear and that it saves something to ride.

Car fare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ .75 Bread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 1 tin pail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 6 eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 1 can baked beans . . . . . . . . . . . .17 2 pints soup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Tin lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Cot and mattress . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.00 Room rent, two weeks in advance . . . . 3.00 Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9.51

And I have ten dollars and ninety-three cents left. I can hold the fort another two weeks on this.

Nov. 15. No work yet. I 'm going to keep a stiff upper lip and find work, or starve in doing it. This city _sha'n't_ beat _me_, not if I can use my two arms and hands and legs, two eyes, one tongue and a brain! No!

Nov. 17. I scrubbed down the three flights of stairs for Mrs. T.

to-day. She has the rheumatism in her wrists, and I was glad to do it for her to help pay for her loan of the pillows and for letting me heat my things on her stove. I must buy my own to-morrow. I feel ashamed to ask favors of her any longer, for I have put off the buying of it till I could get work.

Friday. Now I have just four dollars left; for I bought it to-day and set it up myself. A little second hand one with one hole on top--and no coals to put in it! I don't dare use the last four dollars, for the rent is due soon and I have to pay in advance. I suppose it's all right to secure herself, but it's hard on me.

Nov. 30. I believe I 'm hungry, and I don't remember to have been hungry before in all my life, without having enough ready to fill my stomach. But I don't dare to spend another cent till I get work. It must come, _it must_--

I 've lived three days on a half a pound of walnuts, half a pound of cheese and a loaf of bread--and walked my feet sore looking for a place. I know I could have had two places, but I dared not engage to the women. That woman in the Grand Central Station haunts me; these two women had a look of her! One wanted me in private manicure rooms to learn the trade; she said I had the right kind of fingers after the rough had worn off. The other wanted me to show rooms to rent in a queer looking house. Mrs. T. told me to keep away from it and all like it.

Dec. 1. I 'm not only hungry, I 'm cold too. I bought two pails of coals, and paid high for them so Mrs. T. says. They say there is going to be a coal famine from the great strike. It makes me mad that it should all pile up on me in this way! Why can't I have work? Why, when I am willing, can't I find a place?

An awful feeling comes over me sometimes, when I am turned down at a place I 've applied for: I want to throttle the first well-dressed man or woman I meet and say, "Give me work or I 'll make it the worse for you!" Then I turn all dizzy and sick after that feeling, and hate myself for the thought; it's so unjust.

Dec. 10. I asked Mrs. T. if I might n't pay by the week and at the end of each week. I think she knew what the trouble was. She hesitated for a minute, and that was enough for me.

"Oh, I _can_ pay you," I said, "only it's a little more convenient."

"Then I 'd like you to," she said in her queer dry voice.

I hated her at that moment. I went up stairs to my bare room and took off the knit woollen petticoat I made for myself at home, just before coming down; I took that and a set of gold beads, that were my grandmother's, and went out with them to a p.a.w.nbroker's just around the corner on the avenue. I got eight dollars for the two of them, and made the time in which to redeem them one month. Then I went back to the house and paid her. She looked surprised, but her skinny hand closed upon the money as if she, too, had no more for the morrow. I don't know that she has. The students come and go.

Dec. 14. I stood on Twentieth Street near Broadway to-day, watching the teamsters unload the heavy drays at the back of a department store.

I found myself envying them--they had work.

Dec. 15. I am not up to date with my clothes, and I have no money to make myself so. I find it is for this reason I am "turned down" at so many places where I apply. I read it in men's eyes, in the women's hard stare.

Dec. 17. A man offered to clothe me for a position in a shop, if I would--

I know I looked at him; I think I saw him, or perhaps the beast that was in him. Then I saw queer lights before me, red and yellow--if I had been a man I would have taken him by the throat. When, at last, I could see again, the man was gone. Good riddance! There is such a thing as day nightmare.

Dec. 19. I am beginning to understand how it is done; how the fifteen dollar waists, the diamond rings, the theatre, and the suppers after, can be had without work.

Dec. 20. The strike is on. I should have to do without coals, strike or no strike, for I have nothing to buy them with. Mrs. Turtelot offered to let me heat my food on her stove--my food! I 've lived on one loaf of bread and a can of baked beans for seven days--and to-day I 've been down to the Washington Market just to smell the evergreens that, for all I have no home, give me a homesick longing for the country. But I will not go back; I 'll starve here first.

Afterwards I walked up to Twenty-third Street, and lost myself there in the holiday crowds. What throngs!--jostled, pushed, beset by vendors, loaded with bundles, yet so good natured! No one looked hungry. I stood on the kerb to watch the men selling toys and birds; to listen to the strange cries, the shrilling of the wooden canaries and the trill of the real ones; to peep into the rabbit hutch, and the basket of kittens; to stroke an armful of sleeping puppies; to smell the fragrance of roses and violets and carnations; to smile a little at the slow-moving turtles, the leaping frogs, the Jack-in-the-box, the mechanical toys of all kinds that performed on the sidewalk, each the centre of a small crowd. Then, at twilight, the flare from the chestnut vendor's stand, the little electric lights of the Punch and Judy sidewalk show, the electric torches that the children were carrying, the brilliant whirligigs for advertis.e.m.e.nts, gave to the whole scene a strange unreal appearance. Men, women, children, Christmas trees, dogs, birds, electric cars, rabbits, kittens, a goat, cabs, automobiles, express carts, surged into the flare and glare, first of one light then of another, till what was shadow and what was substance I failed to make out.

Dec. 21. At last, oh, at last, there is work for me,--for me, too, among all these millions! But it makes me sick to know there must be some who are trying and never find.

I have taken a place in a small writing-paper factory. It's down near Barclay Street, in the loft of a crazy old building, three wooden flights from the street. The loft is lighted at both ends by windows and in the top by skylights. It is heated by a large cylinder stove in the centre, and a small glue box-pot at one end. The air is close, but I don't care much, for it is so warm. I get four dollars a week.

I can manage to live, at least, on this. I can think about nothing else to-night.

Jan. 15, 1903. The coal strike is on. It is cold in the loft, for we have to be saving of fuel. It takes all I can save to buy three pailfuls of coal a week for my little stove. I kindle my fire at night, heat water, cook my cereal, or bean soup, and am comfortable till morning; the room is decently warm to dress in. I am off to work at seven. Fuel and rent and some necessary underclothes leave little for food. I cannot redeem my petticoat, and gold beads which my grandmother had from her mother, Marcia Farrell.

July 6. Hot, hotter, hottest in the old fire-trap of a loft. The sun beats down through the skylights till we get sick. Two of the girls fainted this afternoon.

Aug. 4. I discovered the Public Library to-day! It means so much to me that I simply can't write a word about it.

Nov. 4. Just a year ago to-day since I came here. I am able to draw a free breath for the first time, to look about me and plan a little for my future. I 've made up my mind to study for the examinations for a place in the Public Library. My district school was no bad training, after all, for this work. It taught me one lesson: to put my mind on what was given me to do--and I have not forgotten it.

The extra time for study at night will take more fuel and oil, but I can make that up by living a few more days every week on bean soup. I 've made living on four dollars a week an art this last year. An art?

Yes, rather than a science; and, like an art, it accomplishes surprisingly satisfactory results--results that science, with all its proven facts, from which it deduces laws of hygiene, fails to produce.

I honestly believe that I 'm better fed than half the theological students. They scrimp and save--for a theatre ticket! They're a queer lot! I 've asked half a dozen to tell me what they 're aiming at, and not one of the six could give me a sensible answer. If they had said right out--"It's an easy way to get a small living," I would have respect for them. We all have to earn our living in one way or another.

March, 1904. Desk a.s.sistant in a branch of the Library--at last!

October, 1906. When I came down here I made a vow to put everything behind me; forget what I had left in New England, the memories of those hard-worked years, and start afresh; cut loose from all the old a.s.sociations. I have succeeded fairly well. This new life of books is a wonderful one. I like my work as desk a.s.sistant in the Library, and I get nine dollars a week. This is wealth for me; I am saving. I have so much besides: the river and the ferries for a change; one trip up the Hudson--a thing to live on for years until I get another. Sometime I mean to travel--sometime! Meanwhile, I go on saving in every possible way.

Jan. 8, 1907. What luck for me! I don't have to buy a book. The whole Library is mine for the asking. How I have read these last three years! As if I could never read enough; read while I 've been standing and eating; read before getting up and long after I have been in bed.

It has been a hunger and thirst for this kind of food--and there has been enough of _this_! Enough!

Feb. 1908. I am studying French now daily, and beginning Latin by myself, for I want to take the higher examinations for the cataloguing department. That will mean more pay and the prospect of a vacation sometime.

March 16, 1908. How I gloat like a miser over my savings-bank book!

Just one hundred and seventy-five dollars to my credit. I have visions of--oh, so much in ten years!

May, 1908. I was at the Metropolitan this morning. I feel rich when I realize that all this treasure-house is open to me--is mine for the entering. I am taking the whole museum, room by room. A year's work on Sundays.

August, 1908. I have not seen fit to change my method of expenditure since I entered the Library; I have continued to spend as I spent when I had four dollars a week, with the exception that I allow, necessarily, a little more for clothing.

For housing:--

Room, $1.50 a week.

Fuel and oil in winter, $ 0.75 Oil in summer, .26

Now for my art:--

I have allowed for my food exactly one dollar a week and allow the same now. I go down to the Washington Market early in the morning. I revel in the sight of the fresh vegetables, of the flowers and fruits. The market-people know me now, and many a gift-flower I have brought back with me to my room, and several times a pot of herbs or spring bulbs; now and then a few sprays of parsley or thyme. These I look upon as my commission! Without leaving the market, I buy a loaf of bread for ten cents; a knuckle of veal, or a beef bone, a pound and a half of sausages, or a pound of salt pork, for fifteen cents; I vary my purchases from time to time that I may have variety. Ten cents for vegetables--I vary these, also, as much as possible; these, with a pound of rice, nine cents, a half a pound of b.u.t.ter, eighteen cents, and a quart of beans for another ten cents, give me satisfying combinations. When eggs are cheap I vary this diet with them, lettuce and bacon. I buy things that are cheapest in their season. In summer, I drop out all meat and subst.i.tute milk. I allow myself one pound of sugar a week; no tea, no coffee; the city water is the only thing of which I can have enough free. With what is left of my hundred cents,--for in my art it is the cents with which I reckon, not dollars,--I buy fruit in its season, a bit of cheese, sometimes even a Philadelphia squab! At times, they are cheaper than meat in the Market. In the season I can get one for ten cents.

I have an extra treat when I buy that last, for the old man at the poultry stall, who draws the chickens and various fowl, is a model from the old Italian masters. An Italian himself, he speaks little English, wears a skull cap and, to my delight, looks like one of Fra Angelico's saints. I learn all this from the Metropolitan Museum, and apply it in the Washington Market!

At times I haunt the fish stalls, select good sea food for a change, and am rewarded by the play of color on the zinc counters--the mottled green of live lobsters, the scarlet of boiled ones, the silver and rose of pompano, the pomegranate of salmon. I have stood by the half hour to watch the slow-moving turtles, the scuttling crabs in the tanks. I have good friends throughout the Market--men and women. They confide in me at times, like the cod-and-hake man, dealer in dried fish, who told me he had "a girl once down on Cape Cod". He seemed relieved by this confession. He was serving me at the time, and his two hundred or more pounds, his red face and his cordiality were delightful. My b.u.t.ter-egg-and-cheese man also confides to me that he is a commuter; has purchased a home on the instalment plan; has three children, and his wife runs a private laundry.

What remains of the four dollars after the weekly bills are paid, I lay aside for clothes. I make my own shirt waists. It took me eleven months to earn a good skirt of brown Panama cloth; but it has lasted me four years.

I think I live well, _considering_; but, in living thus, there is no denying I cross the bridge of mere sustenance every day, and am obliged to burn my bridge behind me! I don't like it--but am thankful for work. I 'm not beneath adding to my reserve fund five cents at a time.